The Family Fang

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Wilson, Kevin
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Wilson, Kevin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Wilson, Kevin	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Wilson, Kevin	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist's work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents' madcap pieces. but now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents' strange world. When the lives they've built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowwhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance--their magnum opus--whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what's ultimately more important: their family or their art.

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Great! submitted by emjane on July 22, 2012, 6:18pm No, Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang is not a book about a clan of vampires. Rather, it follows the unusual lives of a family of performance artists, Caleb and Camille Fang and their two children. When the book begins, the kids, Annie and Buster (or Child A and Child B as they are known in the art world), have grown up and no longer participate in their parents’ unusual and disruptive performances.

From far away, it seems as though Annie is doing great—she’s a famous movie star and has moved beyond her “Child A” notoriety. However, due to scandals she’s invited, Annie has a hard time finding work, and her personal life is a shambles.

From any distance, Buster’s life is a mess. He’s broke, unsuccessful with his writing, and, due to some unforeseen injuries, has to move back home and live with Caleb and Camille– who immediately try to pull him back into their performances.

Annie and Buster’s current struggles are interspersed with reports of the family’s performance pieces from the past. Some are funny, some are just sad, and all help the reader to understand how the two children have come to be who they are.

It’s a weird read, but one I thoroughly enjoyed.

If You Love Wes Anderson submitted by Sara W on July 31, 2012, 7:23am Annie and Buster aren't doing so well. Lots of kids in their mid-twenties blame their parents for their rut, but Annie and Buster have a pretty good case. Their parents, Camille and Caleb, are performance artists and the children were crucial props in this elaborate public set-ups throughout their childhood.

The premise is excellent and ripe to be mined for drama and old scars, but it never feels like Kevin Willson is merely setting us up. His writing is so honest and his depiction of Annie and Buster is so clear - their lows are agonizingly low and laid completely bare - that the reader develops a real kinship with them.

This issues of having performance artist parents always looking to get a reaction has its complexities as parents age as well. There's a part where the police contact Annie believing her parents to be victims of a random crime and she desperately pleads with the cops to ignore it - it's just a stupid prank, a piece of Fang art. This points out a challenge to relating to or dealing with their parents. How do the kids ever know what's real and what isn't? As children, they didn't always - their insecurity in reality then echoes in their shaky life situations now. But now as adults, there's the issue of being in or being out. No longer being a part of the family art means not having the tip-of that something unusual is about to happen, and having to experience it as an outsider.

The quirky details, the bare emotion, the familial ties, the transition from exceptional childhood to adulthood are all elements that fans of Wes Anderson - especially The Royal Tenenbaums - will especially appreciate. Recommended!

The Royal Tenenbaums' Normal Alter Egos submitted by Zac Johnson on August 19, 2019, 12:33pm The adult children of a couple of oddball performance artists try to figure out how the heck to make sense of their lives. Kind of like The Royal Tenenbaums if the kids turned out halfway normal.